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Boothby Staff
As 2025 starts to wind down, you might be thinking of the year ahead and where you might want to go. For bartendery and brand types, where you want to go might neatly coincide with where a bar show is taking place.
And there are more bar shows than ever, which feels anecdotally right. I mean, we added our own three day celebration of bars, bartenders and drinks to the calendar in 2024, and Bartenders’ Weekender is set for a big year three in Adelaide next year — so I have some skin in the game.
But bar world influencer and content creator Danil Nevsky has some stats to back it up in his recent piece in Drinks International on ‘The future for bar shows’:
“In 2021, I started an online bar event calendar. The idea was to have a simple, easy-to-access, synchronised-straight-to-your-smartphone calendar that everyone can use to plan their year. In 2021 we had 14 bar events around the world. In 2025 we have 68.”
It’s an interesting piece from the European point of view, and as he notes in it, times aren’t exactly great for brand budgets over there, something that the proliferation of bar shows — from Bangkok to the Baltic — doesn’t seem to reflect. There are too many bar shows around the world chasing the same brand money, and it is unsustainable, he writes. And goes on to suggest how he thinks we got to this place of bar show saturation.
“You’re a bar owner from Bangkok who’s been invited to The Clumsies mega events in Athens. It has just been named a top 10 bar in the world and it’s not even in a massive destination city. You wonder what the secret is. You wonder how it got the budgets to bring all these big players. Then it hits you – brands sponsoring the bar show and surrounding activities and some 10,000 bartenders attending. Some even paid for tickets.
“What you don’t consider is that you and every other bar owner have had the same realisation. So, all of you take your bags and fly home with an idea. Bangkok Bar Show, Baltic Bar Show, Mirror Bar Expo, Maybe Cocktail Festival… This year, we have had 68 bar shows, 1 every 5.3 days.”
The conclusion to the piece is that these bar shows should look at bringing in more of the public to justify the investment that brands put into them.
But what I think Nevsky is really saying is that there are too many bar shows built around getting a bar on the 50 Best Bars list.
To put on a festival, acquire sponsors, organise travel and speakers and a timetable of events, and then go out and promote said event, it takes a lot of work. It is a massive time suck. So if the aim of all of that is to get a spot on a list? It’s a lot of time, money, and energy spent on an uncertain outcome you cannot control, so I don’t know if that’s the reason behind a lot of these bar shows.
As a general principle, the more bar shows, cocktail weeks and festivals there are, the better. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing, that people in different locations across the world can get together, get to know each other, swap stories, and share their experience and knowledge. Why should we always be headed to London, Berlin, New York or New Orleans for the same bar shows and festivals every year? The shows that take place there are great, but the world is a lot bigger than that.
And anyway, the bar shows that aren’t viable will find out the hard way, when attendance is low and sponsors stay away. It is a tough business. But the events that try to do things the right way and for the right reasons, these are the ones that can become something meaningful for the communities they serve. They help to put more money in the tills of bars — something for which I am an unabashed advocate — and they help to show these bars to new audiences. They create a buzz about a place.
These are all good things.
Now, adding in a consumer element to some of these shows as Nevsky suggest, makes a lot of sense, but it’s something that takeover and guest shift focused weeks need to do and have done; the Maybe Cocktail Festival here in Sydney (at which Nevsky was a speaker, incidentally, in 2024), had dozens of bartenders from around the world doing guest shifts, and there were just as many civilians at those shifts as there were trade. (The Maybe Cocktail Festival will be back next year too, from what we hear, which is wonderful).
But there is plenty of room, I’d argue — with bias, of course — for a bar show or festival that focuses on the trade, particularly when you can put a spotlight on the bars in a city that up until then, hasn’t really had the focus put on them.
That’s what we did with Bartenders’ Weekender in Brisbane for the past two years. Penny Sippe and I, along with the support from a host of brands and bars and guests (from interstate and abroad), brought bartenders from around Australia to Brisbane and put the focus on the city’s bars and bartenders, all while having a great time. In June of 2026, we’re moving the party to Adelaide, another city with a bar scene that is hitting its strides and offering something unique. There are so many indie bars, old pubs with character, and great places to eat — not to mention, the wineries of the Adelaide Hills just 45 minutes out of town — that I know bartenders from around the country will be keen to get together there. (Save the date: it’s June 14 to 16, 2026 — bartendersweekender.com.)
If nothing else, a bar show is simply a good excuse to get together and discover a place. Because it’s not just about the programming of the festival (although that is super important). Great events are essential, but the bars and the food, and what you do between and after events, is what makes it really memorable.
So yes, there might be a lot of bar shows out there. Bring on more of them, in new cities, with different cultures. Smaller shows are beautiful, too. Bar shows and festivals can show you what is possible, reveal new paths where your career might take you, and give you opportunities to connect with people you otherwise only knew on social media. And if you get to know a city while you’re there, and get a taste for its food and drink, you’ll get a feeling for what makes its people tick.
It’s then up to you to make something amazing out of that inspiration.
Get one of 20 tickets to the 4th annual Drink of the Year Awards
The last big event for us here at Boothby for the year is nearly upon us. It’s the Boothby Drink of the Year Awards, and it’s my favourite event of the year. That’s because it’s unique: there isn’t an awards out there like this one, that recognises the drinks output of the country’s best bartenders each and every year. I like to think it gives us a snapshot of how we’re drinking each year, and it’s also a reflection of who the top bartenders are every year.
This year, we’ve taken on a little more space for the event. It’s all happening against the backdrop of Sydney Harbour at Hacienda in Circular Quay on Monday 1st December next week.
And to thank those of you who have supported Boothby with a paid subscription this year — you can do that now for $59 a year here — we have 20 complimentary tickets available to paid Boothby subscribers. It’s a first in, best dressed situation — contact Lauren Barbato at lauren@boothby.com.au with the subject line “Drink of the Year ticket” as soon as possible. It’s one ticket per person — we don’t have enough for every subscriber — and you’ll need to wait for a reply from us to confirm.
I can’t wait to welcome you to the awards.
Boothby Staff
